Here is Gone
by taratron
Summary: Another Protoform X origin story. To quote the beast himself, "I regret everything."


You and I got somethin  
>But it's all and then it's nuthin to me, yeah<br>And I got my defenses  
>When it comes through your intentions for me, yeah<p>

-The GooGoo Dolls

"Here is Gone"

"It's not that."

"What?"

A low, exasperated sigh. "If it was just a matter of programming, this would be simple. But it's not just programming. This has to be more."

"Something more?" Mocking, just barely, daring to. "Something not left behind, some little sidenote not signed off?"

"Yes." Sharper, and the speaker narrowed his optics. "It has to BE more. Programming can be changed. This can't be just a...a priority. Priorities change.

"This has to be something more. Something valued. We can program anyone for intelligence. What we need is someone who doesn't need that. Who is more than that."

"You want perfection."

"Primus knows someone has to."

* * *

><p>At some point he was sure this would all get old. Boring even. But so far in the many long days since his pod had crashed (crashed. What a term. He had seen the other pods after their landings and somehow his alone had not been damaged, had not really crashed. No doubt that gave the Maximals some ironic nightmares. As much as they could. He still wondered, in that dimness he had instead of recharge, if they realized his programming was Maximal. Perhaps the thought of THAT kept them up at night too.) so little was boring or repetitive that he was sure this would never fully get old. Oh, patrol was dull, but better than being in the Darkside, and every day was something new and promising.<p>

Right now the promise was of biological studies.

The Transmetal crab picked over the upper half of the remains before dropping it entirely, shifting to bot mode to pluck up the bottom half of the primitive ape, shaking it once, then discarding it with the top half. There was little sense in mangling the body further; once he had decided to try devouring parts, his beastmode had insisted it would be fine, but organic blood was nowhere near as fine as mech fluid. Though it had caused no shortage of pauses when he had returned to Darkside, his body smeared with the crimson-fading-to-brown liquid and leaving plenty of trailing drops and footprints behind him.

Not dull. Never repetitive. Staying in the pod, THAT had been dull, some minor form of insane hell; his systems did not ever fully allow him to recharge, and being formless, being simply a conscious mind, turning in and over on itself, could only relive the memories of Omicron, and Rugby, and Tristin, and rarely Slydar, all the slaughters, the delightful entertainment. Being strapped into a pod. Jettisoned with a dozen, two dozen tiny versions of his own trap. And then floating in space, unable to see it, only to feel, on a base level, the simple emptiness around him.

That had been dull. Mind numbing. In contrast it was almost welcome to have his spark halved, if the price was an end to the boredom.

He abandoned the small camp of corpses; in one way it was almost hilarious in that Maximal Last Stand sort of way, how the idiot raptor-traitor-Megatron's obsession had laid down his life to save a small populace of the primitive humans. Dark humor. There were several other groups all over the place, but they had come to learn to run and avoid the large metal beings, and the areas they frequented. Most of the Predacons would shoot them if they could. Rampage was the only one who enjoyed keeping them alive.

For several hours, if he was in a good enough mood.

Fools. Maximals. Idiots. He knew enough they knew he could never die. The plan then, had been to abandon his pod somewhere barren, lifeless. Somewhere his pod would hold his screaming, enraged mind until the end of time.

A good plan. If they had secured his pod away from the others with the auto-dropping. If they had dumped half or more of his protoform silver, leaving him shorter than the damn vermin. If they hadn't left him there, walking away in that maddening way Maximals always did to him. Predacons, at least the idiots on Megatron's crew, were never dumb enough to turn their backs on him. Maximals never seemed to see the danger.

Save for the one who never willingly turned his back...but he had not seen Fishface in almost two weeks. Perhaps the guard had finally walked out on the Maximals; Rampage would never fault him for THAT. In the darkest part of his mind, he remembered, amid the screams of the rest of his memories, and not all of the screams were from other throats, but his own, flickers of memory, of the surges as the unknown Predacon lowered into that pit, an energon blade in hand...only an hour ago the Maximals had left him, this time not even in a pod, and even the well-seasoned to agony X had blacked out when the knife went through his spark the first time. And the Maximals, as always, never listened to the screams.

* * *

><p>"How is it coming-" A voice from the hall.<p>

"Going." The heavily armored femme spun her chair only enough to take in the sleek gray mech half-hanging inside the doorway, one foot still in the hall. It was a habit of his that both irritated and endeared to her; half the time Arthax had his mind in similar straits. It was maddening to deal with when he couldn't concentrate on the task in front of him, but that was usually because he was thinking of the next one, or a flub in the one they had just finished. Left behind half-done, was his usual complaint, even if the project was sealed with approval from High Command.

This new one was right up his niche, however. Nothing half-done would be allowed, and the testing would prove it.

"What's the complication?" He didn't step more into the room. She had a good idea he would hang forever in the doorway if she didn't release something of interest, and Arthax usually tuned out complaints. He could be decent at giving them, the half sliding insults that she was a scientist now, on a high paygrade, and the excess armor made her look paranoid.

"The was is over," he would say, had said a dozen times over, but old habits died hard, and Lynx, after some struggle, could usually tune him out.

"The n-logs." She waved an irritated hand to one of the many monitors before her; several link cables connected her to the mainframes, but every line of programming on the screens was identical. Any attempts to alter even one log resulted in a shutdown, and when the project was reopened, the lines were back to the same static. "Nothing moves. Nothing changes, no matter what I do."

"Then start on the other circulations. Perhaps all it needs is time."

Lynx sighed, but tapped the same entry codes again, as if the seventh time in the hour it would work. And thankfully, for once, when it clearly didn't, and the monitors dimmed and restarted, Arthax held in the words he clearly wanted to say, slipping more into the room, and let his hands fall on her shoulders, an attempt to calm and reassure.

"It's fine. It will be fine, Lynx. They don't expect us to perfect this overnight."

"They don't want perfection, they want-"

"They do, and you know why they do."

She looked up into that serene face, the one full of calm confidence. "THIS part is all your idea, though. We don't need to ace this part, all we need are the bare-"

"No." His fingers clenched lightly, then released as she took a hand in her own, leaning her head against him; for once he said nothing about the points on her helmet. The paint would scuff off. "There is no point in simply perfecting the replica. What good is a perfect replica if it has all the bad qualities of the original?"

She allowed herself a small grin. "You know a lot of that is probably bad propaganda, right?"

"It could be. It would not be a surprise if his fellow faction lied in the records. Half of their records seem made up on the spot as is. But again, no point in a pure replica." And now he smiled. "For one thing, there are no Megatrons around anymore. If we copied it direct, it would have no one to overthrow on a daily basis, and idle hands are Unicron's workshop."

"Maybe his pays better than this." Lynx turned back to the restarted monitors, and with a sigh, tapped back into the grid. Arthax watched her for several minutes, silent, before he slipped back out.

They wanted an original copy. A near direct clone, but no one had seen Starscream in over three centuries. All for the better, according to historians, the Con was mad, that Con was formless and bodiless...that Con had a spark that never aged or shed to pieces. They wanted a copy of that. Arthax would give them far better. He saw no point in recreating a beast, with a spark that kept on sparking, forever.

There was already one out there. But to make one, another one, a better one, one with the mind and intelligence of a genius, one who could see the fissures in the universe and decipher them, one who could perhaps even alter already-existing sparks to be similar to his (why lie, that was what High Command was truly after, you didn't need to have the insight of a prophet to know that), something worthwhile. And for Arthax, a legacy that would continue on long after his own spark faded out.

Some bots ached for their own immortality. Arthax would be quite content knowing part of his spark signature and programming would live forever. But it couldn't be just his, no, he thought as he made his way back to his part of the lab, studying over the rows of materials, and began to design the hundredth protoform build, that source of pride was not for him alone.

The armor, he eyed over the protoform design with some small distaste, but finally added the replica of Lynx's own, older battle style, over the base body. The armor she would insist on; every Transformer wore the base, but Lynx insisted on the battle-ready thickness. She had herself made over three dozen of the designs; they alternated on the work, depending on who grew frustrated the first and most. Hers were always heavy with artillery shells and weapons designs; if there was a similarity to his, it was all in every single face. A composite face of his, and Lynx's together. He had heard of the organic term years ago, but child and parent were nearly as alien to him as Lynx insisting on the armor while she worked at a keypad or filed reports. Creation and creators. A better ring.

He, she, it would be better, stronger, smarter, oh Primus the smartest bot ever to look at the cosmos and see how to improve it. Better than some derelict Deception from a war no one cared about anymore.

Perfection. High Command would have the weapon they wanted. They would also have one with a mind far superior to theirs. His. And hers. A perfect balance between them.

Nothing left behind. Nothing could go wrong.


End file.
